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Concept
Soft science fiction
Summary
Soft science fiction, or soft SF, is a category of science fiction with two different definitions, defined in contrast to hard science fiction. It can refer to science fiction that explores the "soft" sciences (e.g. psychology, political science, anthropology), as opposed to hard science fiction, which explores the "hard" sciences (e.g. physics, astronomy, biology). It can also refer to science fiction which prioritizes human emotions over the scientific accuracy or plausibility of hard science fiction.
Soft science fiction of either type is often more concerned with speculative societies and relationships between characters, rather than speculative science or engineering. The term first appeared in the late 1970s and is attributed to Australian literary scholar Peter Nicholls.
In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Peter Nicholls writes that "soft SF" is a "not very precise item of SF terminology" and that the contrast between hard and soft is "sometimes illogical." In fact, the boundaries between "hard" and "soft" are neither definite nor universally agreed-upon, so there is no single standard of scientific "hardness" or "softness." Some readers might consider any deviation from the possible or probable (for example, including faster-than-light travel or paranormal powers) to be a mark of "softness." Others might see an emphasis on character or the social implications of technological change (however possible or probable) as a departure from the science-engineering-technology issues that in their view ought to be the focus of hard SF. Given this lack of objective and well-defined standards, "soft science fiction" does not indicate a genre or subgenre of SF but a tendency or quality—one pole of an axis that has "hard science fiction" at the other pole.
In Brave New Words, subtitled The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, soft science fiction is given two definitions. The first definition is fiction that is primarily focused on advancements in, or extrapolations of, the soft sciences; that is social sciences and not natural sciences.
Official source
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